Presidential elections set for May

The Chad government on Friday set 3 May for presidential elections, bucking a repeated call by opposition leaders to hold a pre-poll national forum on the electoral process and a host of other political and fiscal problems gripping the country. Some opposition leaders are already saying they will have nothing to do with the poll, in which President Idriss Deby is able to run for a third term thanks to a controversial amendment to the constitution passed last year. “We will not participate in these elections. It’s clear this is all rigged,” opposition leader Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh told IRIN on Friday. With officials beginning to spread across the country to set up electoral offices, the election season gets underway during tense days in Chad, as soldiers and military officers continue to desert their posts and talk about putting Deby out of office by means other than the ballot box. Members of the opposition have been asking the government to postpone the poll, saying there are broad concerns about the make-up of the electoral commission and the overall process. For months they have been calling for a national forum to address these concerns and many others. Saleh said Deby indicated a willingness to hold such a forum when he met with opposition members late last year. “But then we never heard from him again.” “This only proves that Deby wants to go ahead and have these elections his way, on his own,” Saleh said. “We cannot approve of such an operation.” Minister for parliamentary affairs and human rights Abderahmane Djasnabaille told Radio France Internationale on Wednesday that time is tight and the poll would have to go ahead as planned in May. “We do not see the opportunity for a forum, just months away from the presidential election,” he said, noting that the poll and vote count must be completed by the time Deby’s mandate officially ends in August. Deby, a former army commander who seized power in a coup in 1990 then won elections in 1996 and 2001, faces a swelling rebel movement in eastern Chad, a simmering battle with neighbouring Sudan and fiscal problems exacerbated by a recent rift with the World Bank over the use of oil revenues. While there is broad agreement that Deby is increasingly isolated, diplomats say the opposition - armed or otherwise - does not seem to be a coherent, effective force against the leader. But opposition member Saleh says it looks like a question of time. “He’s completely isolated. He’s finished.”